


The Morning After -- But, Like, Not Like That

by cripplepunk



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Developing Relationship, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Lazy Mornings, M/M, Pre-Canon, Trans Hermann Gottlieb, Trans Newton Geiszler, doesnt matter again im just a cripple and [grabs], i guess? i'm just gay idk, it isn't relevant but it's important to Me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-29
Updated: 2021-01-29
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:28:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29056716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cripplepunk/pseuds/cripplepunk
Summary: What if Newt and Hermann DIDN'T suck so much at navigating their relationship? I like to imagine that they had to have had something going on even before their horrible performance during the events of the first movie, even before they would have had the whole "oh, wait, shit, we're actually perfect for each other" moment post-drift.Don't get me wrong, though, they still are going to suck at it in this.
Relationships: Newton Geiszler/Hermann Gottlieb
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	The Morning After -- But, Like, Not Like That

**Author's Note:**

> i'm a big homosexual sorry for this. i haven't written fanfiction in maybe 4 years :flushed:

Hermann had expected a multitude of embarrassing things to come from that damned staff party, but waking up next to Newton Geiszler was perhaps the worst-case scenario that he had imagined. ‘Imagined’ is a bit generous, though, as he had pushed the idea away as soon as the possibility entered his mind. Now, granted, it wasn’t anything salacious, of course, but it grossly violated Hermann’s personal rules about professionalism and boundaries with the plague on his life that is Newton Geiszler all the same. Luckily, said plague was still fast asleep, if his faint snores and the saliva pooling on his borrowed pillow were anything to go by, so there was time to think.

Hermann let himself slink back under the thick covers that his shoddy dorm’s bed had been fit with and, as those that wake up next to Newton Geiszler do, began to recollect what on earth had led to this. His head still felt a bit heavy from last night; there had been alcohol -- bad alcohol, the type of stuff to be expected from a horde of people at their species’ end. Hermann’s eyes shifted in the dark to his floor, where he remembered Newton tossing his rum-stained shirt the night before. He had threatened Newt not to make the cot stink of a brewery and remembered with embarrassment his colleague’s slurred question as to why Hermann should want to see him shirtless.

His bedmate stirred and mumbled, and the mathematician felt himself freeze as the blankets shifted. Then, the air was still again, and Newt resumed his snoring. Hermann let out something between a sigh and a groan and sat himself up again before looking over at the sleeping mass next to him. Newton had wrested some of the covers from himself, an arm now laying across his chest and the other splayed awkwardly downward. Well -- there he was, shirtless. Even in the meager Sunday morning light that stuck stubbornly between the folds of the curtains adjusted over his window, Hermann could see the shades of red and cyan stretching proudly, incorrigibly, stupidly over Newton’s torso, crawling over his shoulder blades and painting over where the skin puckered from thin, twin scars. 

Hermann allowed himself to study the artistry for a moment, something he would never consider doing if his colleague were awake to see it. He had caught a glimpse of the full work every now and again, when the biologist would forget to follow anything resembling lab safety and have to bolt to the chemical shower, as well as the single time that Hermann opted to deliver his updated part of their joint thesis in person: he had taken one look at a half-nude Newt, shoved several manila folders into his colleague’s confused hands, and stormed down the hallway both enraged and flustered. He loathed the kaiju almost less than the man wearing them, but in the quiet dead of the morning, Hermann found himself feeling something akin to fondness.

“Hey man,” said Newt, “you, uh, gonna say good morning or you just gonna keep lookin’ at my tits?”

And, in an instant, the feeling was stamped back down.

Hermann made a disgusted scoff that successfully stifled the choke of his surprise. “Please don’t flatter yourself. Get out of my bed, you drunkard.”

Newt shrugged and pushed a hand against his head as if to cradle it. “I mean, I wasn’t complaining. You totally were ogling my shit, though, man.”

“I do not gawk at people like a lecher, Newton, if that’s what you mean to imply. Some of us have a sense of shame, which is something you clearly lack as reflected by your performance last night. You had spilled almost as much as you drank, which was frankly as impressive for someone of your size as it was utterly disgusting.”

Newt looked as though he was processing the stream of words Hermann had angrily rattled off, squinting in concentration. 

“Haha. My ‘performance last night,’ huh dude? -- Wait, don’t kick me out, Herms, for real, my head’s fuckin’ killing me,” he added, feeling Hermann’s scowl already worsening.

“And whose fault is that?” asked Hermann as he tore the remaining bedcover from Newt despite the latter’s groan of protest. “I do not have to tolerate this kind of behavior from you. You are an adult, or at least I should like to hope so on your better days. Now get up. I had expressly told you not to make my bed into a brewery and yet you’ve salivated an entire low-alcohol content beverage onto it.” 

Newt let out nothing more than an annoyed, almost somewhat pained moan, shoving his face into his pillow and pulling Hermann’s side of the blanket towards himself. 

“You’re an embarrassment,” chided Hermann as he slid out of bed, grabbing his cane and Newt’s rumpled, stained shirt from the cold floor. He dressed quickly, abandoning his pajamas for his usual attire, and nearly disposed of Newt’s shirt into the laundry bin before thinking better of it.

He opened the bedroom door, slipped into the kitchen nook, and discarded the blue-splattered dress shirt down disdainfully onto the countertop. “If you think that I’m going to put your biohazard of a shirt into my laundry and let the laundry-workers start getting ideas regarding the two of us, prepare to be as disappointed with me as I am with you on a daily basis,” called Hermann sternly into the open bedroom door. For once, he was met with silence instead of a flippant retort, and with that something akin to pity seemed to worm into Hermann’s psyche.

His cheap plastic coffee machine rumbled lazily to life, and he watched disapprovingly as his hand brought down two mugs from the cupboard. Likewise did he observe in wordless displeasure as the same mutinous hand fetched a quart of milk and an old bag of sugar, and even witnessed it pour the egregious amounts into the mug that turned coffee from a drink to a dessert, just the way Newt liked it.

Now, as Hermann knew all too well, his body had never truly obeyed him -- always one blasted, lazy leg behind, so it seemed -- but as he found himself stepping into his bathroom and rifling through the NSAIDs and testosterone bottles in his medicine cabinet to fetch a couple of aspirin, he felt as though this was really going much too far. As he made his way back into the kitchen, medicine in hand, he found Newt hanging lazily in the bedroom’s doorframe, blinking blearily in the light. “You made coffee, dude?”

“Please, don’t mention it,” Hermann huffed. “Genuinely. It would be in both of our favors,” he said, stuffing the pills into Newt’s palm and taking up his mug of black coffee in the now-free hand. “The faster you’re sobered up into being your usual level of dysfunctional, the sooner you can get out of my apartment.”

“Whatever you say, man,” Newt replied, plucking up his mug from the counter and heading straight for one of the cushy chairs in what could be called the PPDC’s approximation of a living room, tossing the aspirin in his mouth as he went. “Agh, I hate taking pills. The uncoated ones taste so bad! You ever had one of them get stuck to the back of your throat? Like, why don’t they coat all pills these days? It’s 2023.”

Hermann followed him, sitting in another chintzy armchair pressed up against the wall adjacent to Newt’s spot. “There’s an apocalypse,” he offered dryly, looking derisively over at his colleague, determined not to look down at the still-exposed painting on Newt’s chest. “And typically, people will offer a ‘thank you’ when given medicine for their ailments. I believe chaperones for drunken teenaged delinquents like yourself are actually _paid.”_

“M’yeah, yeah, thanks sooo much, Herms,” said Newt, “for the, like, 76 cents in aspirin you just sacrificed for me or whatever, cheap bastard. I’m not reimbursing you for a date, though.”

Hermann’s mug nearly toppled from his hands, and the acrid coffee that he had been sipping so snidely hit the back of his throat and was nearly spat right back out. ”I beg your pardon?”

“Uh,” started Newt, who looked as though he had just begun to reach through the haze of his hangover to realize what he had said. “Well, you know, like, both of us going to the party together. Havin’ some free drinks, talking to people who probably hate us but make less money than us, watching drunk 40-year-olds try to do the Cupid Shuffle, that kinda stuff. Not kissing or dancing or that kinda stuff, even though I think I tried to get you to dance a few times. Just, y-y-you know, like, us hangin’ out off the clock! Having some fun, you know, gettin’ down and--n-no, not getting down, nobody fucking says that besides maybe someone like you at, like, gunpoint, but, uh, just, like, a date? I guess?”

“...A date, you guess?” repeated Hermann coldly, setting his mug in his lap. 

“No no, I -- listen, Hermann, uh, I can just get up and leave and we can just for--”

“Doctor Geiszler,” he began, his voice tinged with his signature bitterness but ever-so-slightly shakey. “You are going to have to improve your performance beyond drinking five plastic solo cups of blue coconut rum, vodka, and Sprite over a stretch of two hours, making a drunken offer to dance when any song at or below 90 beats per minute is played, and quite nearly swinging my arm off on the way to my dormitory -- which you were only permitted to stay in due to my conviction that you might succumb to alcohol poisoning -- or, worse, embarrass me, if left alone,” Hermann said, clutching his mug with all the white-knuckled tightness that years of tracing and retracing lines on a chalkboard will afford. “And most importantly, Doctor Geiszler, and I do hope you are listening to me for once in your miserable life: you are going to have to tell the other party that this is your idea of a ‘date’ before the ‘date’ has been over for approximately eight hours.”

“Oh. _O-oh!”_ Newt said sheepishly, his face lighting up a bit. “Alright, um...well, uh, peer review noted, I guess. First of all, though, dude, the drink is called kaijuice and your grandpa ass absolutely can’t diss it ‘cause I saw you drink some, and second of all I could have totally got to spend the night anyway even if it turns out I guess I didn’t seduce you into it.”

Hermann relaxed a little, but continued to stare tersely at Newt. “Mm. Never use that verb in reference to me ever again. The next time you decide to take me out on another disgraceful attempt at socialization, come 2300 hours I will remember the hassle you caused me last night, roll you onto your side, and leave you wherever you are.”

“The next time?”

Apparently they were taking turns committing faux pas. Hermann froze, inhaled sharply, and leaned back into his armchair at his mistake. “I’ll...I’ll afford you another chance if you think you can do better, is what I mean to say,” he said at last, then took another sip from his mug in a bid to break eye contact.

Newt cracked a smile -- not his smug asshole grin that he usually broke out around Hermann, but a softer, almost appreciative one that seemed to show the same nervous eagerness as Hermann felt but still would not admit to. 

“Yeah, sure. You know, uh, I’ve, like, kind of considered almost every time we’ve gone out together sort of a date anyway, though, man. The ones where Tendo didn’t invite himself, I mean. I don’t mean to make this weird or anything, but, uh, this wasn’t just a famous, signature Newt Geiszler turn-of-the-moment dope-ass idea I had, you know. Going someplace with you. Like, as a couple. So it doesn’t have to be, uh, a whole big thing or anything. This. What we’re doing. What we’re hopefully doing. Couple stuff.”

“Oh,” said Hermann dumbly. 

“Yeah,” Newt replied. “...Uh...are you...okay with that, man?”

“...Yes,” answered Hermann. “Yes, I think I’m quite alright with that, Newton.”

“Nice, yeah! Uh, right on, man,” said Newt, groaning as he heaved himself out of his chair. “Finished with my coffee,” he added by means of explanation before gently taking Hermann’s empty mug from his hand and walking over to the kitchen sink to wash them out. He whistled as he did so, and Hermann wondered to himself how Newton seemed to be taking this so lightly -- or if he was just as stunned as Hermann was, and was attempting to mask it. Either way, it soothed Hermann’s nerves a bit.

“Well, I’m all awake and stuff now, so I guess I’ll head out with...this,” said Newt, gesturing to his rumpled, stained shirt that Hermann had left on the counter. 

“I’m not going to let you embarrass me by wearing that leaving my room, Newton,” said Hermann firmly. “Put that filthy shirt in my laundry basket -- or, better yet, the wastebasket, then go to my closet and find something suitable.”

“Oho, to hell with the washroom staff’s gossiping about Hermann Gottlieb’s laundry then, yeah? We’ll let’em talk?” quipped Newt, his tone returning back to its usual level of undeserved confidence as he stepped back into Hermann’s bedroom.

“I said that the wastebasket would be preferable,” called Hermann after him, “or perhaps you could take it to J-Tech and see if one of the mechanics could toss it into one of the jaegers’ nuclear cores?”

The both of them were thankful to fall back into their old game of disparaging repartee, something familiar to cling to after being immersed in the old-in-all-but name ambiguity of their relationship. With that, Hermann sat alone in comfortable silence as Newt no doubt disheveled the entirety of his carefully-arranged wardrobe. Before too long, he emerged from the bedroom in a white dress shirt not unlike his previous one, though this one did fit a bit too snugly. 

“Lookin’ good, right my man? This looked alright on you, I guess, but I think I really make it work,” said Newt, who struck a few ridiculous poses in the doorframe.

“I detest you,” responded Hermann derisively as he rose from his seat. “Give me your necktie. You never tie it correctly.”

Newt raised his eyebrows at this, but handed Hermann the neckwear. He didn’t complain, which Hermann thankfully took to be an admission of defeat and therefore did not press any further. Newt simply leaned in and pretended to be very interested in Hermann’s interior decoration tastes, but with no real luck -- to Newt, if you’ve seen one antique store piece, you’ve seen them all. He felt as though he had already sweated through the fresh shirt by the time that Hermann had finished carefully maneuvering the folds of black fabric. Hermann then took a step back to admire his handiwork. “There. For the first time in months, you look like someone of your academic stature.”

“Uh, thanks,” said Newt. “Yeah, it’s only strangling me a little bit. I’m only losing, like, 4% of my circulatory system’s effectiveness.”

“You’re welcome. I can now boot you from my dormitory in good faith,” replied Hermann, who sidestepped past Newton and held open the door. “Take your leave, then, Newton, if you will.”

“Such a gentleman,” said Newt, who stepped into the foyer behind him. “How about I repay you for your crazy extreme sacrifices last night and this morning? I can pick you up tonight; take you up that second chance? My treat?”

“Ah,” fumbled Hermann, unable to completely suppress his mild surprise as he gripped the handle of his cane a bit tighter. “That would be in order. It’s a date, then.”

Newt smiled. “Sure is, man. Uh, see you tonight?” he asked, stepping out the door.

“Yes, Newton, I’ll see you tonight,” Hermann replied with a gentle nod.

He began to shut the door at the same time Newt began to walk away, both of them looking away from each other as soon as they could. They didn’t have time for a serious relationship; they were supposed to hate each other; the world needed them; neither of them had any substantial experience with a connection like this; this wasn’t supposed to happen. But, as the two knew all too well, it already had happened. It had been happening for years.

They’d see each other tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading yooo i'm a huge gay moron so i'll probably be making more content of these assholes ... stick around


End file.
